


Phase In/Phase Out

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Category: South Park
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, Exaggerated Comma Usage, Fluffy Ending, I mean kind of, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Rambling, why is that not a tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 22:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10448700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Kenny's favorite hobby was to collect Craig's secrets, and each one he kept under loving lock-and-key. Craig, in all his greyscale dulled edges, was the most interesting thing Kenny had ever had the pleasure of unlocking. Their relationship was a game, and it took him a very long time to realize that he was never the only one playing.Rated M for mild smut and swearing. Crenny. One-Shot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I've been writing bits and pieces of this for a while now. I have been hesitant to share it only because it doesn't have much in the way of a plot or a direction even, but I like the way my words flow in it enough and friends liked it so here I am. Also the world needs more Crenny content even if it's just a bunch of plotless writing. Please enjoy! 
> 
> Fun fact: this is also the most NSFW I have ever written! Exciting and fitting that it would be South Park's sexiest couple.

Craig was not so subtle as he believed himself to be—at least, not to the trained eye. Certainly from afar his vacant stares all looked the same, and it was hard to tell if he was laughing at you or with you, but there were signs on him just like anybody else. You just had to _want_ to see them. Kenny took this as a personal challenge.

It took several months of prodding but Kenny eventually discovered that Craig was not actually stoic at all. He put on a trademark blank face that people read however they wanted out in public, but when you got him alone, Craig was full of emotional surprises. Kenny felt blessed to have been allowed in the company of his bedroom on many occasions, where he witnessed magic in the form of snorting giggles and smiles and light dancing between lovely dark eyes. Kenny thanked his past self over and over again while tangled in old space print sheets for being curious enough to dive into everything about Craig Tucker. Once he’d accidentally whispered his gratitude between breaths, and Craig stopped his devilish nipping to look at him with a funny expression that only made Kenny regret making him stop. “It’s nothing, just, thank you I guess, _ah—_ “

And he never said it again.

Craig’s buttons were _so_ fun to push, because it always played out like a game. Kenny could read the difference between neutral and annoyed in his seemingly identical expressions in a way absolutely no one else could, and he was proud of that. He could be fuming and no one would notice. No one except Kenny, of course, who bothered to learn him, memorize every curve of his face and gentle twitch of his brow until he could map an entire story out on his chest. He traced them into Craig’s bare sternum with lazy fingertips, so that the lines he burned into his bones would make them his alone. Craig rolled his eyes at him with more feeling than he’d shown in the entire four hours they spent out with friends earlier, and affection bloomed across Kenny’s body like a wildfire.

 

* * *

 

As much as he sometimes wished it so, bedrooms were not always for sex, and Kenny learned more about the universe staring up at plastic stars than he ever did in his seemingly unending years of formal science education. Craig was positively fixated, adorably so, and so much so that sometimes he’d lose track of what he was saying halfway through saying it.

“Did I tell you about HD 1897, uhh… 733b? They discovered it not too long ago, it’s blue because-“

“Is that the glass one? Yeah, I remember that one. Glass rain is cool.”

“Oh.” Craig played with the fraying ends of his jacket. That was a sign that he was embarrassed. He picked at things when he felt embarrassed. “I know I talk about it a lot. I just think it’s really cool.”

“Nah, you’re good.” Kenny smiled, rolling over on his side to face him and take his hands to make him quit pulling his jacket seams. “It’s cute when you get sciency, it shows you’re not a robot.”

Craig scowled. “I’m not a robot. I just hate people.” He glossed right over the ‘cute’ comment, having learned long ago he’d never win that battle.

Kenny laughed and squeezed his hands. “Maybe that makes you more like a robot though, Craigster, since you can spit out all these facts at random. It’s like you’re a database. Oh god, I’m fucking a computer!” He gasped in fake shock and Craig swatted at his arm, grumbling at him to shut the fuck up, and he laughed some more. For a boy nobody understood, he sure was predictable. “What’s that stupid show on MTV? True Life?”

“Yeah, the one with all the basket cases and occasionally serious stories.” Craig leaned back against his headboard and let his head loll to the right to face his room, staring off at some invisible thing Kenny would never see.

“Lemme get a spot on that show. Come on Tucker, you gotta come with me. Maybe the audience can sympathize when they see how hot you are. True Life: I’m Fucking A Robot.” He wiped a hand through the air to imitate a title card.

“I said shut the fuck uuup,” Craig groaned, shoving his shoulder with his foot, but Kenny just laughed and laughed. Craig started to smile too, eventually, and laughed with him for a few blissful moments in unspoken forgiveness for his teasing. _Then_ it was time for bedrooms to be for sex, and Kenny would lose his mind for entirely too short orgasms at four in the afternoon before families got home so they could moan as loudly as they wanted to. Craig had mastered the art of leaving bruising marks along his collarbone and he’d be damned if he let them fade before he left new ones. Kenny thought it was incredibly hot, and he would happily give him at least one thing to dominate with. Craig towered over him while they stood but melted underneath him. It was just another secret Kenny liked to lock away for himself only.

Another of those secrets was that Craig liked to hold hands when they fucked. It was strangely chaste, but Kenny liked it, because it reminded him that he did have feelings and he did want closeness and it wasn’t all just a primal need for touch and pleasure. Their fingers intertwined as the corner of the bed sheet snapped from the mattress and neither cared because they were much too wrapped up in the way Kenny was thrusting his hips against Craig’s thigh like he needed it despite the clothes still between them. Their hands would stay clasped and sweaty through every step and especially once Kenny was deep inside him, pinning him by a sweet and pure grip that was anything but sweet and pure when they did it. When laid flat over the bed Craig clawed his back to shreds with his free hand and bit his shoulder so hard Kenny swore he drew blood and it did nothing but make him harder and inch him closer to climax.

In these moments, as raunchy as they were, Kenny thought they were the closest to lovemaking they ever got. They both liked it rough but there was something sweet in that handhold above Craig’s head that permeated the mood so that his touches felt less like lust and more like love, and he knew Craig loved it in the way his eyes softened. They never held hands outside the bedroom. Craig’s walls with small chips in the paint from old posters and glow in the dark constellations peppering the ceiling acted as their force field, holding in it every touch and desire so that it felt sacred and raw and unimaginably real. Two sweaty hands smacking the headboard with each thrust had to be good enough, and it was, for the most part. An affinity for punching things was an easy cover for Craig’s frequently bruised knuckles.

“So,” Craig panted, breathless, reaching out blindly for his rumpled jeans for Kenny to inevitably grab them and toss them in his direction, “the only way to shut you up, is to have sex with you?”

Kenny heaved his own steadying breath, and he leaned over Craig while he shimmied his pants back up without standing because he was much too spent to bother. “Bingo.” He smirked and Craig glared, but it held none of its usual fire when the haze of sex still clouded his murky eyes. Still, it lit Kenny aflame.

“You’re such an asshole,” Craig groaned, letting his forearm fall lazily and dramatically over his beautiful eyes. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

Kenny snickered. “Love you too, babe,” he murmured, and Craig grumbled before clutching him by his newly donned t-shirt to pull him into a sloppy kiss. Kenny happily obliged. Life was good.

 

* * *

 

Except for when it wasn’t. Craig’s stoicism simply did not mesh for most people, and while Kenny was patient, he was no saint. Kyle had called what card he’d been pulling a ‘bitch-fit,’ but Kenny didn’t care what Kyle thought. Kenny cared what Craig thought, and it seemed as though Craig didn’t think much at all. It was so easy for distance to grow, for Craig to break away on his own island until oceans separated him from everyone else. Kenny clung to the roots of his trees but it was not always enough. Somehow, he still watched Craig drift away from him, looking away, disinterested and dissatisfied. It bothered him more than he’d like to admit.

It was how Kenny found himself clenching his fists and gnashing his teeth, itching to break something whether it be himself or a nearby object. It was nearly two in the morning, and they were out on the street, and Kenny had grown tired.

“You’re such a dick,” he growled, and it held none of the affection it usually held in the safety of Craig’s bedroom. They were nearest to Kenny’s house, where yelling on the street wouldn’t be questioned. _‘Good,’_ Kenny thought. “All I did was touch your goddamn hand, I didn’t even try to hold it, honestly—“

Craig heaved a sigh, and it did nothing but rile Kenny up further. “Can you _please_ just _act_ like you maybe give a shit what I’m saying?” Craig looked at him, calculating and simultaneously empty eyes focused sharply on his own, and he accepted it as the best he was going to get. “Thanks.” He let the sarcasm drip heavily like the sweat down the back of his neck. He got a little hotter when he got angry.

“Why’s it a big deal to you if somebody sees you holdin’ my hand? Half the school knows we’re seeing each other, shit, half the _adults_ know we’re fucking. What fucking difference does it make?” At some point he’d crossed his arms, and ‘bitch-fit’ was feeling more and more appropriate with each scathing thought he processed. He’d never denied that Kyle was right.

Craig said nothing, but he broke eye contact to pivot on one foot and turn away from him, an act of avoidance Kenny couldn’t ignore. He looked up and his hat slid back on his head just slightly so that the tufts of soft black hair flattened by it stuck out from the brim. It was exactly at that moment that Kenny realized the reason he was so angry was because for once he didn’t understand the person he’d spent the most time understanding.

He let silence buzz between them for a while and Craig never moved his gaze from above. His neck was bent oddly in a way he was sure hurt, but Craig never cared about that when it came to stargazing. Kenny uncrossed his arms and suddenly felt vulnerable, and very much like he’d bit off more than he could chew. He walked the handful of steps it took to stand directly in front of him. “What are you afraid of?” Kenny whispered up at him.

Craig’s eyes slid down from the sky and onto Kenny’s face and if it wasn’t two in the morning, at this proximity, Kenny would have been able to see the slightest hints of sapphire in them. He didn’t say anything, just stared, and Kenny would have been annoyed if he wasn’t an expert at reading Craig Tucker and couldn’t tell that he was concerned. It was in the wrinkle to his brow that was usually perfectly smooth, the worry line that showed so rarely. He was confused. He looked away.

“The moon’s the same.” Craig finally uttered, after Kenny gave him ages to reply. A flare of anger lit up his chest but he forced it down, if only because curiosity outweighed it.

“What?”

“The moon is the same.” Craig tilted his head higher and pointed at it. Kenny followed it, and when he gave Craig a look that explained both his exhaustion and confusion, Craig let out a tiny huff of breath that almost resembled a laugh. “It’s the same as the first night you said you wanted to kiss me.”

Kenny blinked, slowly at first and then rapidly. “You’re tellin’ me that you remember what the fuckin’ moon looked like when I first kissed you?” Craig nodded like it made perfect sense. “…Do you remember a lot of days?” he hesitantly asked. Craig nodded again.

“Okay then, what about the first time I fucked you?” He joked.

“Crescent.”

Kenny’s eyes widened. “What about the first time _you_ fucked _me?”_

“Gibbous. Waxing, I think.”

Kenny laughed. “Are you serious?”

Craig cocked his head. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know, I just—“ Kenny giggled, doubled over and held his stomach because where it had just minutes before hurt from distress it now hurt from laughter. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s you, but okay.”

“No really!” Kenny wiped a tear from his eye and straightened his posture. “You drive me crazy, push me off, and then you pull shit like this. You know the phases of the moon on important days of your life. Unbelievable. Wait, our sexual escapades are important days of your life?” Kenny rolled his eyes and snorted in an attempt to contain his laughter. It didn’t work. “You’re such a fucking dork, you know that? God, Craig.” Kenny saw his brow rise just millimeters, just enough to mean that he was happy, because Kenny secretly knew that Craig secretly liked to be called by his first name in private. His mouth parted in the littlest smile and Kenny couldn’t help but copy him. The tension melted from the air as they stood together in silence, their eyes wandering back up into the stars that twinkled their whispered hellos at them. The stars always calmed them down.

Craig held out his right hand then, his palm up and fingers splayed. Kenny looked up at his impossible height, met his coal black eyes, and found unique warmth there that was so rare he vowed to cherish it like gold. Kenny then studied his hand, watched it tremble in cold or nervousness, he couldn’t know. This was hard for him, clearly, but he was being patient. It was the patience that Kenny had spent all this time thinking was on his end alone. Kenny suddenly felt like Craig was trying, and he wondered if that meant they were actually boyfriends.

That realization gave him the last push to slowly, carefully, thread his fingers between Craig’s. His hand was knobby and cold, but bigger than his and comfortable. His hold was loose and kind of clammy and nothing like the desperate squeezing he did mid-orgasm. Kenny felt his heart race, and decided he liked it quite a lot, if not more, this way.

They held hands into school the following Monday. No one noticed. No one except Kenny, of course, who decided as they dropped their sacred contact for class that Craig Tucker was going to get the blowjob of his life on his living room couch after school, as a Kenny McCormick-approved reward for patience well-spent.


End file.
